100 rivers: part 2

For awhile now, my father has been working towards the goal of having run 100 rivers.  For awhile he was sitting in the high 90s, only a couple away from his goal.  With his birthday coming up this last February we hatched plans to accomplish his goal the day he turned 52.  The weather cooperated and the Quartzville drainage had plenty of water.

Power was out in the Lebanon area due to a dozen or so power lines that had fallen onto HWY 20 with the high winds, slowing things down a little but before long we were cruising up the always longer than I think its going to be Quartzville road.

We started the day on Upper Quartzville for some fun assurance before hitting his 100th stream in the form of Canal Creek, a tributary to Quartzville.

Quartzville went well and we had a blast, even with two new pieces of wood blocking the classic lines in David from Behind and the log duck.  We used an alternate put in that added a neat culvert rapid and dropped us into Quartzville just before Technical Difficulties.  Quartzville really is a great run with easy access and many class IV rapids.

We set our second shuttle at the confluence of Canal and Quartzville and headed up to the Canal fork of Canal Creek.  I had heard from the generation of Corvallis Creekers (Eric Fostermoore, Rick Cooley, Josh Grabel, Chris Gabrielli, etc) before the current version that the Canal fork had some stuff on it including a class V rapid.  We hiked/roped our boats in and made good time down the stream, there were logs here and there but nothing to complain about.  Before long we reached the Class V drop, which looked tough and consequential and we decided to portage on the right.  Below here were a few more fun rapids before reaching the confluence with Elk Creek and the stream became Canal Creek proper.   We had plenty of time so continued down this fun stretch of stream that had lots of class III slides, one larger blind slide (center left was good) and 2 stand out boulder gardens near the end.

The day was ultra smooth and rewarding, the power was even back on by the time we returned to Sweet Home, allowing us a food stop on the way back to town.  Here is a video of the trip.



Quartzville Creek gauge went from 1200-6000 cfs throughout the day.

   -jacob